


came across it, lost it

by portions_forfox



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M, Post-Series, coffeeshops lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ten years later she looks exactly the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	came across it, lost it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enemeriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/gifts).



> [](http://enemeriad.livejournal.com/profile)[**enemeriad**](http://enemeriad.livejournal.com/) started talking about post-series concepts of double divorce and meet-ups, and then i remembered [](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/profile)[**fluffyfrolicker**](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/)'s beautiful [prompt](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/35323.html?thread=954107#t954107%22) using that beautiful quote during her beautiful [women ficathon](http://fluffyfrolicker.livejournal.com/35323.html). so i wrote this, yeah.

They run into each other again when tiny pink flowers are budding on the trees in Central Park, cherry blossoms blooming, serenading through the air. There are dog-walkers jogging through the street and floral dresses peeking round the corners, wind lifting up their corners all Marilyn Monroe. It’s outside a coffeeshop, believe it or not. Blair looks exactly the same.

They sit down and order cappuccinos, scraping chairs forward, spouting pleasantries. When the waitress brings it Blair wraps her long painted fingernails around the plain white mug and finally meets his eyes, smiling blandly.

“You hurt a lot of people, Dan,” she tells him, utterly unblinking as she stares him down. “What do you have to say about it?”

“Well,” Dan begins, and thinks: _There are a million things._ There are a million things he has to say about it, about them, about her. He wants to say _youth_ and he wants to say _nothing_ and he really, really wants to say, _loneliness._ There are a thousand million things he wants to say to her. He goes with, “You hurt me.”

She doesn’t move at first, the steam from her coffee slowly rising in the air, her cutting smile curved in frozen accusation, and the sunlight from the window casting light onto a few wayward hairs around her face—floating, floating, floating. Then she smiles a little wider, still tight-lipped, and bends her head to her cup, lifting her hands.

“You knew what you were getting yourself into,” she tells him. “You always did with me.”

 

 

 

 

 

Outside on the corner after parting ways, Dan shades his eyes and tilts his head to the street sign up above him. Gray-white light is blurring his eyes; in the wind a flock of cherry blossoms flutters by and it’s only then he realizes, oh, it’s March 22. The very first day of spring.

 

 

 

 

 

When they were younger, just before they got together, Dan called up Eric just to talk and catch up and Eric being Eric, Dan ended up telling him everything. And Eric went, “Blair Waldorf?” and laughed, this kind of wary giggle sort of thing; “Good luck with that, man.” Then, more seriously, Eric said, “Are you absolutely sure you wanna do this?”

And Dan was thinking, _God_ no. No, I’m not fucking sure. She’s dramatic and she’s contentious and she’s high-maintenance and classist and she’s just so _much_ , so fucking much to handle all at once. Not to mention the crazy ex-boyfriend.

But the thing is, despite all these things, despite all these obvious reasons that Blair was wrong for him or he was wrong for Blair or they were just flat-out wrong for each other—despite _all_ of that—he just couldn’t even find it in him to imagine not going through with it. Couldn’t even _conceptualize_ not marching right through and grabbing her waist and holding her too tight and saying Blair, Blair, _Blair_ , and kissing her and taking her to pretentious movies and buying her eclairs in the middle of the night and fielding every new traumatic incident which seemed to pop up every day when Blair was around. It was never an option. He was never not going to do this.

He was never not going to love her.

 

 

 

 

 

In his first, she went by Claire. In the second it was Blake, the third Tessa, the fourth Penelope, and the fifth Renee.

It wasn’t until the sixth book that he managed not to write about Blair.

 

 

 

 

 

(The point is, basically, he never got over her.)

 

 

 

 

 

They run into each other again, same place, this time on purpose. Not _explicitly_ on purpose, so to speak, but it’s the same time, and the same coffeeshop, and the same day of the week, so it’s up to you to connect the dots.

“I heard you got divorced,” Dan says over coffee.

“I heard you did too,” Blair responds, sipping daintily. She smiles a little meanly at him, and he smiles back.

Dan sets down his cup. “And you have a son now,” he says carefully, and Blair nods slowly, careful too. She says, “He isn’t like his father,” and Dan says, “I never asked if he was,” and she says, “I know, I just didn’t want you to worry.”

A moment passes in silence, and she drinks more steadily now, taking full swallows instead of sips. Then she sets down her mug.

“Actually, sometimes he reminds me of you,” she tells him, the same steady look, the same unblinking brown eyes—they’re just as big and round as ever, just as hard to look away from.

Dan’s treading careful ground here. “Probably not,” he answers. “His...mannerisms, or, or, or his...personalit—ythey probably just remind you of you. Which reminds you of me. Because we’re a lot the same, and, you know. Transitive property and all that.”

“Oh please,” Blair rolls her eyes, “don’t flatter yourself by equating us.” And Dan’s grinning all of the sudden like a maniac because _there she is_. There she is under there.

“Well, I guess...” Dan amends, shifting in his seat, “I guess I wouldn’t be the greatest judge of...reminders. Things that remind.”

“Yeah?” Blair presses, resting her chin on her palm, her elbow on the table. “Why’s that?”

“Because,” Dan shrugs, and then looks at her—“Everything reminds me of you.”

Blair blinks at him a couple times, round brown eyes open-shut, open-shut. The strands of hair from her ponytail are sliding out around her neck just the slightest bit, and Dan knows she must hate it but it’s beautiful that way, she’s really...beautiful. She smiles. Her lips open this time.

“Do you wanna get coffee sometime?” he asks her, grinning grinning grinning he can’t help it.

“We’re having coffee right now, Humphrey,” she says, and it’s like he can’t smile any wider than this but he does.

“You want to anyway?”

She shakes her head, but doesn’t stop smiling. “This is really stupid of you, Dan,” she tells him. “Do you have any idea what my life is? I mean,” and she stops, really looks at him, her lips trembling slighlt and the unsurety, the unfairly familiar Blair loneliness just waiting there beneath—“Do you have any idea what you’re about to put yourself through?”

He looks at her, there, sort of broken. Been that way a long time.

Then he grins.

“Yes,” he says.

And he takes her hand.


End file.
